Education for Map Librarianship

Education for Map Librarianship MARY LYNETTE LARSGAARD The History of Map Librarianship Education IN THE EARLY 19OOs, most map libraries were administered by persons with varied academic and professional backgrounds, few of whom had any professional training in library science. As interest in geography grew in the United States and its colleges during and between World War I and World War 11, an increasing number of professionally trained geographers with, by definition, undergraduate or graduate degrees in geography, but woefully lacking in library science skills, found employment as map librarians.’ The only kind of education for map librarians until the 1950s and the 1960s was the kind that is still considered by some to be the best-on-the-job training. Persons became caretakers of maps generally by accident while on their way to somewhere else, and fre- quently under protest. Maps are traditionally the stepchildren of any library; they and their fellow cartographic materials, with the exception of atlases, are in nonbook format, and are therefore awkward at best and suspect at worst, as far as therest of the librar‘y world is concerned. Sothe person in any library “stuck with the maps” (and so it was expressed) was either the lowest on the totem pole or had made the fatal mistake of not being at the meeting at which the issue of map caretaking was decided. Fairly often, those persons who originally found themselves in a dark, dusty room (probably below ground level), staring with dismay and perhaps even horror and dislike at a stack of dark, dusty maps, later discovered they had become fond of these bulky, beautiful, supremely Mary Larsgaard is Map Librarian, Arthur Lakes Library, Colorado School of Mines, Golden. WINTER 1981 499 MARY LARSGAARD useful objects, in spite of the latters’ supposed crotchets and actual carctaking problems. The few who had volunteered to takc on the maps, either because no one else would or because they liked maps in the first place, were quickly or already won over to the side of truth, beauty, and the right. But it was not until after 19.50 that some interest was shown in the revolutionary idea of training persons for map librarianship before, not after, they became map librarians. “In 1950 Professor Joseph A. Russell, Chairman of the Geography Department, LJniversity of Illinois, recog- nized the need for a map course to improve the skills of geography studcnts.”‘ The resulting course, intended for geographers and librarians, was taught from 1950 to 1958 by Bill M. Woods, and in succeeding years by Robert White and David Cobb. William Easton of Illinois State University, Normal, also taught the course, which for many years remained “the only accredited course in map librarianship available anywhere in the world.”3 Mercifully for the researcher, the written history of map librarianship education begins relatively recently, just after 1950, with Woods’s seminal article in Special Libraries, in which he noted that library schools were finally offering courses in special librarian~hip.~Woods also made recommendations for the curriculum for map librarianship, which still hold up well thirty years later-introduction to maps and map libraries; cartobibliography (catalogs, periodicals, atlases, geography generally); care and preservation; classification and cataloging; old and rare maps; use of maps; and cartography. Silence settled once again, until Woods’s next article in 19.56, in which he extended his recommendations to include an undergraduate major of thirty to thirty-two semester hours in geography with special attention to cartography and research, a minor in ge010~gyor history, and a foreign language. He closed with recommendations to the aspi- rant to consider graduate work in geography, and to obtain an intern- ship in a map library.5 It was not until the late 1960s that articles on map librarianship education became frequent, when a veritable gaggle turned up in Library Literature, dominated by Walter Ristow’s survey articles of 1967 and 1976.6From the reports made by Woods andRistow over the25-year period from 1952 to 1976, it is apparent that art followed life: the frequency of articles on map librarianship education did indeed reflect the frequency of such education. In 1967 specialized training in map librarianship in the United States was still offered at only one school, the University of Illinois, 500 LIBRARY TRENDS Education for Map Librarianship although some slight attention was given to maps in cataloging and technical processing courses at other schools, and several library schools made provision for directed specialized studies, including map interest. Little seemed to be happening on the international scene until the International Federation of Library Associations’ Section of Geography and Map Libraries formed in 1973 a working group on training for map librarianship to investigate the current situation in re training, to make recommendations, to prepare practical guidelines for map librarians, and to promote and organize seminar^.^ In 1976 Ristow recommended that, because of the heavy concentra- tion of map libraries in the northeastern United States and on the Pacific Coast, library schools in those areas consider introducing map librarianship into their course catalog.8 Map librarianship need not have felt discriminated against because of this lack of mention in university catalogs; while in 1975 over 80 percent of accredited library school programs offered one or more special librarianship courses, half of the programs of specialization were offered by a little over one- quarter of the schools, and specialization by type of special library was offered at only 66 percent of the school^.^ Subspecialization was most often seen where “a defined body of literature and a distinct professional orientation among users” existed, and was perhaps most developed in those areas “where the end use of academic training can be predicted with some certainty.”1° At this time (1975) four library schools were offering a course in map librarianship.” By 1976, the number had grown to five-University of Illinois, [Jniversity of Toronto, Columbia LJniversity, Western Michigan University, and Catholic University of America-and directed studies and specialized reading courses were available at a number of schools.12 The West Coast had at that time no course offered through the library schools, but the University of Oregon and Southern Oregon College both offered map librarianship courses, taught by resident map librarians.13 By 1978 the number of accredited North American library schools offeringat least one course in map librarianship still stood at five (the same five), there were still possibilities for practica and independent studies, the University of Oregon still offered a course (generally taught in the summer), and one course had been taught at the IJniversity of British Columbia.l4 In 1980 matters were much the same, having remained at a plateau for more than ten years, with five schools offering at least one course in map librarianship, although the University of Illinois is considering expanding its course to an integrated program, and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee now has a map librarianship curriculum. WINTER 1981 501 MARY LARSGAARD The State of Library Science Education Before any person goes into map librarianship, he had best take a good hard look at library science generally. Library science education has moved from pre-Dui times, with apprenticeship and in-service library training classes, to the Columbia School of Library Training in 1887, to accreditation of schools in 1923, to the conferring of master’s degrees in 1947-48, to the 1970s. The latter has rung with calls for change, a trend toward tailoring each student’s program, the integra- tion of two or more course areas, and a vague feeling that a big shakeup is needed, that if we do not take hold and make the necessary changes, someone else will.15 All of these attitudes may be classed as the few good things that came out of the 1970s employment crash. Library schools are changing their names to schools of library and information science, and with good reason: something called an information manager is on the scene. What do information managers do? Well, they do what librarians have done for years, except information managers are paid considerably more than librarians, they never do clerical work, and they naier call themselves librarians, probably because the persons they supervise are called librarians. Other agencies of modern-day life have tumbled to the ancient fact that knowledge is power, and have eagerly translated it to mean that the management of knowledge is thus extremely important work. Robert Taylor, dean of Syracuse University’s School of Information Studies, certainly makes this clear: It is my contention that the profession of librarianship-or, if you will, the information profession-is the most exciting, challenging, and necessary profession in the latter quarter of this century. This depends, however, on two things-first, the profession must cut its umbilical cord to the library. Only when that cord is cut will we become a true profession. In its best sense, librarianship is too important a profession to be tied to the fate of a single institution. And secondly, the schools must themselves graduate professionals who feel comfortable working throughout the information environment.‘6 We live in a world where information grows exponentially, doubling every ten years, and where information services employees form slightly over half of the work force of the United States. And ironical as it may seem in such a world, this bonanza is in the main blithely passing us by-us, the people who knew information before it was a star. Busi- nesses have seen the light, and they feel no qualms whatsoever about not only generally ignoring the library world, but, worse, using that world 502 LIBRARY TRENDS Education for Map Librarianship to get what and where they want, while we mumble, “Service to the public,” and retreat yet one more ditch.

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